Share this story

I admit to a fair amount of skepticism when it comes to most virtual reality applications; I remember hearing how VR was the Next Big Thing back when I was in graduate school—and that was 20 years ago. Even if the technology was further along than it is now, a VR application needs to benefit substantially from a port to the VR setting and the additional features (especially the 360-degree perspective) this allows.

Boardgames do not appear, at first glance, to meet that criterion. If the play's the thing, then why would it be better to play something in a virtual cabin than through a regular app or at my kitchen table? (I have a good table.)

But Asmodee Digital hopes to change that perception by porting the most popular and mainstream Euro boardgame, Catan, to a VR setting. Asmodee acquired rights to the Catan brand in January 2016, and it has since launched several new extensions to the brand, including a new Game of Thrones-themed Catan game.

Catan was first released in 1995 as The Settlers of Catan, winning the prestigious Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) award in 1996. It went on to sell over 23 million copies, even appearing at Ben's bachelor party on Parks and Recreation as Ron Swanson tried a novel wood-hoarding strategy. But as tabletop games found new audiences through app versions, Catan has lagged with one of the worst app adaptations out there, featuring corny graphics, weak AI players, and an unwieldy implementation of the game's core trading mechanic.

Asmodee Digital recently offered select members of the press a peek at the current build of Catan VR, which I sampled on an Oculus Rift device. While I'm still a VR skeptic, the port does offer some substantial advantages over a 2D rendition of the game. Catan is popular because it's a social title by the standards of Eurogames; you can play without trading, but it makes the game harder and far less enjoyable. The negotiations that go on throughout the game as players try to acquire the right combinations of resources to build roads, settlements, and cities are as central to the game as the dice rolls... and so is telling one of your opponents to go pound sand when she asks to trade an ore for a sheep—or when you roll a seven and the Robber steals half of her goods.

Playing in virtual reality makes this more conversational aspect of Catan come to life even when you're playing opponents who aren't in the same (real) room with you. While Catan VR will include AI opponents sporting the same cartoon avatars that have always accompanied Catan products, virtual reality doesn't bring much to the table if you're only playing the computer. If you're playing human opponents, however, VR will bring the experience of digital gaming a good bit closer to reality: you'll hear them through the headset and see their avatars move and gesture (if crudely) while they talk. Given how much the Catan experience depends on active table talk, this seems to be the biggest improvement a VR game can offer over a good Catan app for tablets.

Selecting an option.

Asmodee Digital

Asmodee Digital

Asmodee Digital

Welcome to the hunting lodge...

Asmodee Digital

Dat sunset.

Asmodee Digital

To place pieces on the board, you drag and drop, an intuitive motion that's at least reminiscent of working with wood and cardboard on the table top. You use hand controllers to "press" virtual buttons by pointing at them—just as if I were poking someone hard enough to wake them—which then advances you to the next menu, where you can select a road, settlement, city, or development card. Any structure you're building then appears with your cursor in front of you so you can drag it with your fingertip to a legal spot on the board. Each opponent's current victory points, cards, longest road, and army size is always visible in a banner above the player's avatar. The trade mechanism is weak with AI players—it wasn't evident when a trade offer had no takers—but it would work well with live opponents who could tell you where to stick that offer of a wood for a brick.

VR doesn't add much to everything away from the table, however. The board looks great, with texture on the hex tiles to match the mountains and forests, and cute if non-essential animations like birds flying around. The room around you looks like a country cabin or lodge, and aside from the Catan sunrise appearing if you look out the cabin window, there's nothing new to see beyond the board and the avatars of the players you face. Creating an immersive experience might help convince people who haven't already invested in VR—both in the equipment and in the concept—that virtual reality will enhance the boardgame experience, but the current build's static environment doesn't go far in that direction.

Further Reading

It's also possible that virtual reality and boardgaming just aren't a good mix—or at least, the combo doesn't offer enough beyond what we can get in a good boardgame app. There are hybrid games that combine tabletop settings with RPGs, like Gloomhaven, or cooperative adventure titles like Dead of Winter, any of which might work well in VR. Perhaps Pandemic, the king of cooperative boardgames, could switch from a static board to a virtual war room where players can manipulate the map and share information.

Catan offers name recognition and broad appeal to many levels of gamers, but this implementation—which, to be clear, is still in development—has to ultimately clear a higher bar to show why a VR version is necessary.

Share this story

39 Reader Comments

I think we will need projectors and the illusion that the people are in the room with us without glasses before augmented gaming catches on.

On the really bright side, pets will have their own systems to play games with their friends. Having a worn out dog happily greet you when you get home from work and not worry about destroyed furniture or shoes from a bored pet ever again.

The whole point of a board game IMHO is the interaction it affords with real people sitting across from you while (perhaps) enjoying a beverage. I tried VR for the first time a week ago and it was very cool and I can definitely see applications that would be better in VR than in 2d on the screen, Fallout for instance. The whole appeal of these board games for me is that they are board games.

Please spend a lot more time in VR. =)Social interactions in RecRoom, AltSpace, VRChat, and Anyland are *exactly* like sitting/standing right across from real people, because they are real people. =) But... with the benefit of you and they getting to project their own chosen avatars of themselves instead of what genetics gave them. ;-)It's a paradigm.

I recommend to the author and all: Tabletop Simulator. It's a great board game program for playing a plethora of board and card games, with user-added games galore via the Steam Workshop.It was originally a normal flat game but last year they added VR support.

It's true, not feeling the tactile sense and weight of moving your meeple around or the ephemeral feel of rolling dice in VR is NOT as good as the real thing.Obviously not!My cousin who lives 300 miles away and I like to pop in and play Blackjack or FLUXX together and chat. Sometimes when he sees the 2 of us are on & playing, my best friend (who lives ~50 miles from me) will jump in and join us, sometimes his girlfriend swaps in. That more than makes up for some of the not-real stuff like not feeling dice in your hands. =)I just txt'd both of them that there's a Settlers of Catan version in VR and they both want to play. (They like Catan way more than I do...)

From the article:

Quote:

"It's also possible that virtual reality and boardgaming just aren't a good mix—or at least, the combo doesn't offer enough beyond what we can get in a good boardgame app."

Author Keith Law, please check out TtS in VR with friends (or join someone's lobby, but I only play with IRL friends). =)Also, look at how many people are playing Hearthstone (a digital TCG) versus physical Magic The Gathering. It's far easier to match-make on the internet with the entire planet of gamers across all time zones than it is to find someone to play with in your neighborhood at 2am. ;-)

The whole point of a board game IMHO is the interaction it affords with real people sitting across from you while (perhaps) enjoying a beverage. I tried VR for the first time a week ago and it was very cool and I can definitely see applications that would be better in VR than in 2d on the screen, Fallout for instance. The whole appeal of these board games for me is that they are board games.

OT

Quote:

Even if the technology was further along than it is now, a VR application needs to benefit substantially from a port to the VR setting and the additional features (especially the 360-degree perspective) this allows.

I haven't had my coffee this morning. It took me 3 reads before I understood why you put that phrase in since it gratuitous. You could have just said:

Quote:

A VR application needs to benefit substantially from a port to the VR setting and the additional features (especially the 360-degree perspective) this allows.

I'm going to chalk it up to lack of editors on the weekend.

I don’t know I play virtual boardgames all the time via table top simulator (which has had this feature for forever). The advantage is I can play even when I am on call for work or working a problem for work, can’t get the gang together because real life is interfering, and it doesn’t take me half an hour to set up or take down the board games anymore (which seems to be what it takes with every board game I play these days that are much beyond Catan, I mean all the pieces to Rebellions for example takes 15 to 29 minutes to layout, organize, shuffle, etc).

One thing that VR isn't going to be able to replicate for a long while though: The social interactions similar to any poker game. Reading facial expressions can be huge. For example, every time I play with my sister, I purposefully aggravate her into begging lots for the things she needs while bitching at everyone for not trading that stuff to her, then I play a knight and move to steal what I need from her. By moving my hand slowly over her cards, I watch for slight eye twitches and when I see it BAM I get what I am looking for.

One thing that VR isn't going to be able to replicate for a long while though: The social interactions similar to any poker game. Reading facial expressions can be huge. For example, every time I play with my sister, I purposefully aggravate her into begging lots for the things she needs while bitching at everyone for not trading that stuff to her, then I play a knight and move to steal what I need from her. By moving my hand slowly over her cards, I watch for slight eye twitches and when I see it BAM I get what I am looking for.

Come back when that's available

It's still in it's infancy, but you would be really surprised how much you can get just from how people lean, tilt their heads or move their hands. I was skeptical until i played Werewolves Within for a while... sure, it'll get better and better each generation, but that is the same for everything.

To me the major problem with all of these versions of Catan is that they're just the base game, which really isn't worthwhile playing in my opinion. Cities and Knights is the game as it should be, but none of these projects ever include any of the expansions, which are absolutely necessary.

[quote="Swimminginurea"]I think we will need projectors and the illusion that the people are in the room with us without glasses before augmented gaming catches on. .../quote]

I read the header and what popped into my mind was the ability to see the "world" from god mode, with the other player avatars also looming. I don't know from the included images if that's what this is, but faces on a video screen, IMHO, don't hit that bar.

Social interactions in RecRoom, AltSpace, VRChat, and Anyland are *exactly* like sitting/standing right across from real people, because they are real people.

No it's not. Sharing a physical space with all the sensory and social stimuli that entails is very far beyond our current VR capabilities.That's not a value judgement (in some cases I think the virtual interaction is preferable), but they are two very different things.

I've been playing catan on playcatan.com for 5 years, they keep trying to push us to try what they're calling Catan Universe, it's the 2d version of this VR implementation and it's 100 times worse. The one thing that playcatan still has over this is the easy way that UI gets out of your way and just lets you play the game, obviously it could be a lot better but for the most part the UI doesn't assert itself too much, instead it's very clear how to play just based on your previous knowledge of the IRL game. Also you don't need to learn new mechanics or UI gestures or any of that playcatan is very WYSIWYG while Catan Uni is the exact opposite, with features hidden behind unintuitive buttons. The trading mentioned in the article is crazy difficult in Catan Universe and completely destroys the game for me at least.

Board games do not appear, at first glance, to meet that criterion. If the play's the thing, then why would it be better to play something in a virtual cabin than through a regular app or at my kitchen table? (I have a good table.)

Weird - I think board games make a great fit for AR/VR (probably more so for AR, a future version of Hololens or a direct competitor, for example) - instead of having to waste a lot of space (and a lot of resources to have created) perhaps a few dozen sets, you simply download apps from the whatever-store and get ~4 people locally/remotely who own Hololens/etc. and play that way.

For a DnD-inspired game, you could even download DLC - new campaigns and board layouts.

I feel board game direct-adaptations and even new forms of video games that are heavily based on the setup of a board experience would fit very well with AR/VR and could be (collectively) one the killer gaming-apps. Possibly enough to push board gaming of a sorts back in the mainstream like it was in the 80's and earlier.

The whole point of a board game IMHO is the interaction it affords with real people sitting across from you while (perhaps) enjoying a beverage. I tried VR for the first time a week ago and it was very cool and I can definitely see applications that would be better in VR than in 2d on the screen, Fallout for instance. The whole appeal of these board games for me is that they are board games.

Even though I spend a lot of time on the internet, I still enjoy interacting with people IRL. However, especially with board games, my game nights are about once a week to once every 2 weeks. I'd like to play more bg, so having more options like these aren't so bad if the trade off is I can spend more time with folks in this fashion. Otherwise, conventions are out of town and require me to drive hours, and spend hundreds of $'s on hotel rooms.

Actually, the internet is already like this. I'd rather spend time in the company of geeks, tech folks, gamers, and other like interests, but sometimes, the internet is what's practical.

Eh, for me and my friends, games are a conversation conveyance device.

Games are good, but every online interpretation of a board game that I've played has ended up with everyone concentrating on the game rather than each other.

(Of course, some people find that games not taking 2-3 times the time mentioned on the box is a *good* thing, so tastes may vary).

Meh I can’t imagine having to spend 6-9 hours to play a normally 3-4 hour game as being pleasurable. I could only imagine using say TI3 or Runewars in order to convey conversation. Those are already long enough at 6-8 hours. Or not even going that big, spending 4-6 hours to play something like Caverna would be insane.

(Note: just my opinion. I played a lot of board games and I found Catan to be deeply infuriating, with the continuously shifting availability of resources making it impossible to build a long term strategy)

Until a cantankerous social-inept can flip that table, this will lack that certain je ne sais quoi.

I do wonder if individual apps is the best way to provide digital versions of board games. Games as modules to a more general board gaming program makes a lot more sense to me.

It's the best capitalistic way. We all need to buy everything again and again.

I don’t get your rant. Games as modules in such a platform would certainly not come for free either.

Edit: quote of the post I wanted to answer.

We are talking about board games here, I assume. Board games can be defined as a set of rules, and a set of physical tokens representing some aspect of those rules.

Electronic Video games based on board games need to primarily define how light can be used to represent those physical things.

The best video games have fluid logical pleasant interfaces that incorporate rules in an easily grokable way. Tetris for instance - better graphics aren't going to help make that game better in any appreciable way.

So if a decent platform espoused those features, adding more electronic "tokens" and game rules is the easy part.

What I am saying is, it's completely superfluous and counterproductive to keep paying Devs to create the game-logic|token housing platform. Instead we will wind up with a shitload of crappy games that attempt to convert an awesome board game to digital form.

I wasn't implying that you should never pay for new things.

As a comparison, consider Web Development, reuse of platforms is paramount so that one doesn't need to reinvent the wheel every time. Some of those platforms (e.g. some CMS's) are complete crap surely, but then some are pretty awesome and allow you to build upon existing work without too many negative consequences.

Until a cantankerous social-inept can flip that table, this will lack that certain je ne sais quoi.

I do wonder if individual apps is the best way to provide digital versions of board games. Games as modules to a more general board gaming program makes a lot more sense to me.

It's the best capitalistic way. We all need to buy everything again and again.

I don’t get your rant. Games as modules in such a platform would certainly not come for free either.

Edit: quote of the post I wanted to answer.

We are talking about board games here, I assume. Board games can be defined as a set of rules, and a set of physical tokens representing some aspect of those rules.

Electronic Video games based on board games need to primarily define how light can be used to represent those physical things.

The best video games have fluid logical pleasant interfaces that incorporate rules in an easily grokable way. Tetris for instance - better graphics aren't going to help make that game better in any appreciable way.

So if a decent platform espoused those features, adding more electronic "tokens" and game rules is the easy part.

What I am saying is, it's completely superfluous and counterproductive to keep paying Devs to create the game-logic|token housing platform. Instead we will wind up with a shitload of crappy games that attempt to convert an awesome board game to digital form.

I wasn't implying that you should never pay for new things.

As a comparison, consider Web Development, reuse of platforms is paramount so that one doesn't need to reinvent the wheel every time. Some of those platforms (e.g. some CMS's) are complete crap surely, but then some are pretty awesome and allow you to build upon existing work without too many negative consequences.

For what I know, game publishers take care of their digital versions. I own a few on iPad, they are all nicely GUIed, mostly bitmap rendered rather than 3d rendered.

If VR boardgaming becomes a thing, there may be a few trial and error, but they will quicly find what’s working. I don’t know much about programming digital boardgame or VR, but I don’t think that a boardgame oriented framework or platform have to be more than assets for table, chairs and meeples over Unity.